17 pages • 34 minutes read
Taylor MaliHow Falling in Love is like Owning a Dog
Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 2002A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Literary Devices
Form and Meter
Taylor Mali’s “How Falling in Love is like Owning a Dog” is a 40-line, free verse poem, meaning that there are no consistent patterns of rhyme, rhythm, or meter throughout the entirety of the piece. The poem has a total of eight stanzas, or groupings of lines, the longest being nine lines in length (Stanza 1) and the shortest being two (Stanza 4). Mali is not constrained by any formal requirements, making it easy for him to play around with literary devices like contradiction and repetition throughout the poem. This freedom within the form also speaks to the content of the poem in that Mali articulates, with greater accuracy, the inherently fluid and ever-changing nature of love. Free verse also gives Mali the freedom to go off script, ad-libbing new lines and playing off of live audiences based on their reception of the poem as it is being performed in real time (see: Further Reading “Listen to Poem”).
Figurative Language: Simile and Metaphor
The comparison made between falling in love and owning a dog in the poem’s title is a simile: a figure of speech that directly compares two dissimilar things, commonly signaled by the words “like” or “as.” Mali’s use of simile reveals the complex facets of falling in love by comparing it to the more common and significantly less complex phenomena of owning a dog. While the idea of love is abstract, pet ownership is a much easier concept to understand. By comparing the two, Mali makes the idea of falling in love more accessible to his audience, creating a space for himself and others to be vulnerable as they revel in the joy and mystery of romantic connection.
Mali utilizes multiple metaphors, or exact comparisons between two unrelated things, to create a dramatic interpretation of love. Mali’s use of metaphor personifies love; instead of an abstract concept, love is now alive. For example, “[…] love is warm. / It lies between you and lives and breathes / and makes funny noises” (Lines 10-12), and “Love […] / […] needs to be fed so it will grow and stay healthy” (Lines 13-14). Mali’ diction choices relating to dogs further this demystification of love, adding humor and levity to the poem. Small colloquialisms like “come home and love is always happy to see you” (Line 16) or “Bad, love, bad! Very bad love” (Line 20) make readers conscious of the light tone of the poem. Figurative language adds further depth to Mali’s observations about love, keeping readers entertained as well as enlightened.
Repetition
Even though the poem does not adhere to any type of formal rhyme scheme or meter, Mali still creates a dynamic cadence through his use of repetition. As a literary term, repetition refers to the deliberate repeating of sounds, words, or phrases within a piece of writing, particularly with the goal of drawing a reader’s attention to a specific theme or idea.
Including its appearance in the title of the poem, the word “love” is repeated 31 times throughout the poem. This repetition not only reinforces Mali’s main thematic concerns, but also makes readers eager for its next appearance in the poem as they become increasingly familiar with Mali’s style. This repetition also increases the overall pace of the piece, inundating readers with the constantly changing facets of life and love.
